Airline BMI Takes Israel off Maps

Army Radio reports that British airline BMI has removed Israel from the electronic maps displayed to passengers in some of its planes. The report claimed that the reason was to avoid offending Muslim passengers. Israel does not appear in maps on BMI flights between London and Tel Aviv, and that the pre-independence Arabic name for Haifa appears instead, according to the report.

In addition, the electronic maps display the distance between the plane and Mecca. "This is a fault. The electronic map will be removed from the airline's two planes that operate the route to Tel Aviv,” BMI said in response. “We make every effort to take passengers' sensitivities into account through an apolitical policy."